Herpes

Herpes is a viral disease that’s spread through contact and exchange of bodily fluids, often via an infected person’s lesion. Grossed out yet? We’re just getting started.

No sexually transmitted disease is a walk in the park, but herpes is particularly unpleasant: It’s highly transmissible, difficult to detect in a partner who’s asymptomatic, and there’s no permanent cure. It can and should still be treated, though, as medication can decrease the severity of symptoms and prevent it from expanding into other organs or the nervous system.

There are several different strains of the herpes simplex virus, but the two most common are oral herpes, an infection that causes cold sores and blisters on the face and mouth, and genital herpes, which can produce weeping lesions on sex organs. Both strains alternate between symptomatic and asymptomatic periods — sometimes the disease is both painful and visible, other times not — that vary in duration and severity. To complicate things further, some people have a natural resistance to herpes — which is great because they’ll never develop any symptoms but also not-so-great because they can still act as carriers, unknowingly infecting their partners.

Since there are a few different strains, herpes seems particularly prone to rumors and misinformation — can you catch genital herpes from an oral herpes sore? (Yes.) It goes away, right? (Sadly, no. Symptoms can vanish for a while, but they come back.) Stay tuned to AskMen to get your facts straight from the latest news and research about the herpes virus.